Do you have your own YouTube Channel for your business? If yes, congrats to you as you are taking advantage of yet another great opportunity to expand you market presence and brand. Oh, and you’ll be able to sell more products or services over time too. If you answered that question with a no, then I can’t tell you how disappointed I am that your business doesn’t have its own YouTube Channel.

YouTube used to be the place were you could see cuddly little animals performing stupid tricks (or sometimes funny ones). Or it was the place you’d find dumb pranks or really dumb tricks. It still is but to a much lesser extent than before…especially when Google decided to purchase YouTube and make it part of its product family a few short years ago. Since them, Google has really revved up the YouTube business engines. The YouTube of today is moving in the direction of providing original programming, providing an expanded array of advertising options and now a vastly improved (and valuable) analytics package like its great Google Analytics does for websites today.

So, why consider building a YouTube Channel? For one, YouTube represents a huge organic search engine with literally millions and millions of people scouring for information on just about any topic you can think of (that is legal and not pornagraphic of course). Think of YouTube as you do with Google’s organic search engine. Every day people are looking for information products, services, ideas on a wide variety of topics…including whatever it is your business does and how it does it.

I don’t care what business you are in, people are looking for real and valuable information that will in some way help them. I can also tell you what they aren’t looking for: being sold a product or service…at least not directly like some carnival barker.

Want to see the emerging direction of YouTube? Check out this channel:

Notice that Howcast has over 389,000 subscribers and over 650,000,000 views…something we marketers dream about. Now, you might not have that many subscribers or views but you certainly can develop a large following in the context of your business model.

Here’s an example of a law firm that has developed a YouTube channel that drives between 30-40% of their new client flow.

Spar and Bernstein has 529 subscribers which is excellent but the telling number is the 742,000+ views the channel has had since it started in 2007. The video on most of its 546 clips is not the best quality but that doesn’t stop people searching for information on immigration law from finding and watching it. Brad Bernstein, who in my opinion is not only a top notch immigration attorney but also a marketing visionary. In 2007, he decided to tape his daily radio show and then post the video clips of the show onto his YouTube channel. The results over time have been spectacular in the context of driving real business to the firm. And, if you watch the videos, they are educational as Bernstein is answer live questions from his radio show listener audience.

YouTube. It’s not the old YouTube you used to know.
Watch for more upcoming posts on establishing a YouTube channel for your business. You can do it!

If you ever needed a great example of the power of social media marketing, you needn’t look further than author Seth Godin. Godin, a highly successful business book author (Outliers, Linchpin, All Marketers are Liars, etc.) made the decision recently to self-publish his next books. Godin is breaking the link that has historically been the driver of publishing revenues: publishing the works of big name authors. Is this author insane? Not even close. More like smarter than a fox.

The chief reason Mr. Godin can make a clean cut from his publisher is because of the work he has done to build his social media platform. As of this posting, Godin has over 400,000 people who follow his blog. He already had developed a brand name that stood for being a thought leader in cutting edge in marketing & business strategy.

Godin has a market of loyal followers and therefore, a ready stream of buyers of his books. Who needs a publisher to share the profits with when you already have a growing supply of buyers? Did I mention that the profit margins on his books would largely go to into his pockets?

Godin isn’t the first big-name author to develop blogs and Facebook fan pages that house thousands of loyal followers. But he’s the first big-name author to break the traditional publishing process and go it alone.

Build an asset. Large numbers of influential people who read your blog or read your emails or watch your TV show or love your restaurant or or or…

Then, put your idea into a format where it will spread fast. That could be an ebook (a free one) or a pamphlet (a cheap one–the Joy of Jello sold millions and millions of copies at a dollar or less).

Then, if your idea catches on, you can sell the souvenir edition. The book. The thing people keep on their shelf or lend out or get from the library. Books are wonderful (I own too many!) but they’re not necessarily the best vessel for spreading your idea.

And the punchline, of course, is that if you do all these things, you won’t need a publisher. And that’s exactly when a publisher will want you! That’s the sort of author publishers do the best with.

And while Mr. Godin is the exception and not the rule, it does demonstrate that social media coupled with strong personal branding can create a franchise business. His method for doing this was simple: produce a series of thought provoking books (his products); invest time and energy (but not necessarily a lot of money) into social media expansion while growing a personal brand (who in business doesn’t know Seth Godin?).

We might not all be at the Seth Godin level just yet but he gives us a look into what is really possible with the convergence of social media and personal branding. It’s a great lesson for the rest of us.

I’ll tell you flat out: I love Linkedin as a business networking tool. Each week I devote some time to reviewing what some of my network contacts are doing and look to add additional contacts to my base. In a few short months I’ve been able to add several hundred contacts to my LinkedIn network…and these are people that I know already.

I also see a number of people I know, people who have established businesses, using LinkedIn as well. A few seem active and engaged with LinkedIn. Many others seem to start and then stop. They lose faith in the art and science of networking. They might gather a few names but they don’t seem to be adding any contacts. Is it because they just ran out of contacts and stopped at let say , 20? Not likely.

It’s more likely that they just don’t invest the time that it takes to grow and engage a group of contacts. It is often difficult to see any results as you are building your network. Some people will stay stalled because they cannot see the value of online social media platforms like LinkedIn. What’s the point? How will it help them grow their business? Will it make them money?

High performing Big Dogz, both individuals and businesses, understand the value and power of social networking sites like LinkedIn. They get the point. They seem to understand better than most that business networking is an investment of time that will pay off if you do it effectively.

Social media platforms like LinkedIn are another way to communicate and engage many different layers of business contacts. Look at it this way: LinkedIn is a very efficient and effective tool for acquiring and managing business contacts on a far wider and deeper basis.

I’ve been working with LinkedIn for a few years now and I keep learning more everyday. Here are a few things I’ve learned so far that might make your experience more fruitful:

Invest a consistent amount of time each week to working your LinkedIn account. I’ve learned that investing my time in smaller doses on a consistent basis is all I need to keep my network growing and maintaining it.

Engage your network. With LinkedIn, you can poll your network on any question you want. What better way to get a read a critical issue facing your business or industry than to ask your trusted group of network contacts? That’s just one example of engaging your network. Another is just updating them on a regular basis on issues or business events, ideas or needs. Use the “What are you working on now?” section on your home page to alert/inform or ask your network for some help.

Keep adding new contacts each week. One of the best ways to do that is to look at one of your contacts and see if you know anyone that’s not already in your network. Invariably, I’ll find a few people each week and send an invitation to them. Almost all accept and my network grows.

Both quality and size of network count. LinkedIn is built on the concept of only including people you know and trust into you network. It’s what makes LinkedIn more discerning as a social network platform than others. But as your network grows, both the quality and size of your network give you an advantage. It’s simple math. Having 200 trusted and known contacts gives you greater reach and depth than having just 20.

If you are engaging your network both in giving and receiving information, ideas, etc., you’ll find over time that your network will become a contributor to your business. You just have to stay with it and have a little faith.

What is this thing called ‘social media’ and ‘social networking’? How do they relate to business? How can they help your business grow and remain competitive? In this , we asked Catherine Brown from Dotster.com to walk us through it all. Dotster.com is one of the leading internet hosting, web, and domain management firms in the world, so no better place to start than there.